


Coat

by Amelia_Clark



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Trope Challenge [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cas is dead but he gets better, Character Study, Episode: s07e02 Hello Cruel World, Heartbreak, M/M, Pining, Sad Dean, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelia_Clark/pseuds/Amelia_Clark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean didn't realize he was in love until he watched Cas die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coat

**Author's Note:**

> **#29: Clothes sharing**
> 
>  
> 
> This is the most depressing possible thing I could have done with this trope, and I'm so, so sorry.

Dean didn't realize he was in love until he watched Cas die.

Not the first time--not the showdown at Stull, it was all too fast, too much to take in--no, the second. The reservoir in Kansas, where creatures not him walked his body into the water, bled him out into blackness, took him away for good. It was then, helpless on the bank while the angel who rebelled for him again and again died, again, that Dean felt something inside him break down, fade away with Cas and leave only an aching void, and that's when he knew for sure.

He hadn't known. It had been hard enough for him to acknowledge that, yeah, he was attracted to Cas, that he daydreamed of kissing him, of ripping off that coat and that tie and tumbling around a bed more comfortable than at any cheap motel--that seemed, though terrifying, safe somehow. Dean knew sex, knew it backwards and forwards and sideways and up against the wall, and just because he'd never done it with another dude didn't mean he couldn't figure it out if it came to that. Which it never did, despite the looks that went on too long, the personal space issues he'd stopped caring about.

But Dean didn't know love. He dimly remembered the warmth of his mother, cuddles and grilled cheese; and he knew his father loved him in his way--he died for him too, after all--but that was more action than emotion. Affection was not something John Winchester did well, and he'd passed the flaw along to Dean. Romantic love, especially, was something Dean had no reference for.

So it struck him like lightning, the sudden clench in his gut, the overwhelming feeling that a part of him had died with Cas, and that it was an important part, maybe even a necessary one.

And then he knew, and then Cas was gone.

All he had left was the coat.

*******

So he took it. He stowed it in the trunk of the Impala, with his clothes and his guns and the rest of his life, and when they switched cars it came with him. It had been sopping wet when he picked it up, of course, and it dried in a stiff heap, took on the smell of stale water, and Dean still carried it along, from car to car, ignoring the looks Sam shot him--first of confusion, then of pity. It was a talisman, a grave marker. Not just for Cas, but for Dean's heart, found and lost in an instant.

One night, well into a bottle of whiskey, he left Sammy asleep and drove, reckless, out past the edge of town, pulled over into a field. Bottle in one hand, he opened the trunk, looked at the coat, reached out to fist his hand in the fabric. And realizing it's what he intended to do all along, he took it out, shook some of the stiffness from it, and put it on.

It fit him better than it had Cas; he was a little taller, a little broader in the shoulder. Dean took another swig and stretched out on the hood of the car, staring up at the starless night and thinking of Cas.

He was there for hours, only heading back to the motel when the cold got too much to bear. Maybe he only meant to do it once, but three days later he did it again, walking this time, too drunk to even get the key in the door lock; he laid down in a ditch, wrapped in the coat and drowning in pain. Alcohol only numbed it a little, so he drank more, and then it stopped helping at all.

But Dean kept doing it, going out by himself in the night with the coat, putting it on and trying to remember the exact shade of Cas's eyes. Eventually he started jacking off, quick and perfunctory, the scant seconds of orgasm the only time Cas's image was sharp in his mind. In those moments, coming alone in the dark, Dean felt the coat like an embrace, and he missed Cas so much he wanted to die.

And then, one day in Colorado, he came back; when Dean put the coat into Emmanuel's hands, he gave his whole heart along with it.


End file.
